Custom Vans - West Coast Vans 40 Years Later

You already know we gearheads are an opinionated bunch, forming strong beliefs about and prejudices against certain vehicle styles. Currently, it's the so-called rat rodders in the hot seat, just as lowriders were scorned before them. Dragster racers hated and ridiculed the first Funny Cars. Bar fights broke out over flatheads versus overheads. Coupes and sedans were excluded from dry-lakes racing by the roadster snobs who started the Southern California Timing Association. Some things never change.

2/30Coby Gewertz, publisher-editor of Church magazine (CarsNotCulture.com), blew all minds with this ’bagged baby. His ’50s-style version of a ’60s vintage Econoline was a big hit at the ’11 Grand National show, too

Of all the victims of the style police, none has suffered more or longer than poor vanners. The occasional foreign cover car notwithstanding, nothing we've printed on these pages since 1948 has generated nearly as much hate mail as the decade of van material that all began with a cover-blurbed, full-color feature titled "West Coast Vans" (Aug. '71). Even though vans mostly disappeared from these pages before the fad fizzled, every HRM staffer of the last 40 years has undoubtedly heard all about how their predecessors "ruined hot rodding by promoting vans," and, in turn, about how those vehicles "ruined the magazine."

Although ex-editor Terry Cook (1972-1973) often gets the credit/blame, he reminds us that it was his immediate predecessors, Don Evans and A.B. Shuman, who initially added vans to the mix of "Everybody's Automotive Magazine." Unfortunately for both of them, circulation results lagged by as much as nine months after an issue was produced, and neither editor hung around long enough for newsstand sales to validate their editorial instincts.

"HOT ROD's circulation had fallen in the late '60s," Terry explains. "When niche magazines started coming out with all street rods, or trucks, or mini-trucks, you could have a whole magazine about your favorite vehicle, instead of buying HOT ROD and hoping to find one picture. My job was to sell magazines. I put the last three years of covers on the wall of the publisher's office, sales figures under each one, stacking each month together. Sales seemed to spike for issues including vans. I said, 'Wonder if...?' So I put the vans in and sales went nuts. In the next two years, we sold a million more magazines than in the previous two years."

3/30Contrasting heavily with the typical shag-and-chandelier interiors in ’70s vans, Gewertz’s Econoline has this gorgeous, custom wood interior. The seat fold into the floor.

Looking back at the relatively small percentage of '70s issues occupied by trucks, younger readers may well wonder what the fuss was all about. You guys and gals might get another chance to find out, if a recent meet in Southern California foretells a nationwide revival. The number and variety of local Dodges, Chevys, and Fords that showed up in Buena Park to celebrate the 50th anniversary of North American–built vans reinforced Editor Kinnan's suspicion that somethin's happenin' here. What it is ain't exactly clear, but we can tell you that many of its practitioners are young guys who can afford only one vehicle and live to surf—exactly like those SoCal surfer dudes who launched the original craze, only with much shorter hair (in far fewer colors).

Cook reminded us that it was HOT ROD that inspired the first Van Nationals, an annual event that celebrates its 38th renewal this July in Ohio (see Vannin.com). Two decades after Wally Parks planted a fake reader letter suggesting the formation of "a national hot rod association," Cook's Dec. '72 issue similarly asked, "Why doesn't HOT ROD have a van happening for the whole country?" adding, "Drop us a line and let us know what you think, and when and where you'd like to meet." The Rocky Mountain Vans took the bait, offering to host the inaugural National Truck-In the following summer. Our extensive coverage of that event (Nov. '73) opened with a small cover photo of the "Lift-Out Centerspread" inside. Shot from high above the host facility, the image is of about 150 colorful van roofs, artfully arranged to spell out "Keep On Truckin." It's gotta be the fuzziest two-page photo ever printed here. "We hired a helicopter for $175 an hour so [photo editor] Mike Brenner could get that shot," Cook explains, chuckling. "But he forgot to put the camera on 'infinity.' I think Mike's brain was on infinity!"

4/30Introduced as a ’61 model, the Econoline pickup was based on the Falcon van. Among its other advantages over conventional shortbeds were its longer cargo box (7.5 feet long), its lighter weight, and its better fuel economy. Handling and horsepower left a lot to be desired, however. It was gone after 1967.

Some of our dear readers might be wondering the same thing about the current editor's brain, now that Kinnan—himself an owner of a vintage van—has brought the controversial boxes back to HOT ROD. We trust that more of you enjoy and appreciate any rear-drive, real-steel, all-American, mostly-V8-powered vehicles that have managed to survived the last half century. Whether the heat we're detecting is from the last ember of a dying movement or the spark of ignition, only time will tell.

Vans of the Past
As you would expect, the HOT ROD archives are chock-full of van photos from the '70s, as staffers covered van-ins, cruises with vans, vans, vans, and more vans. We even spun off van-specific magazines and single-issue mags devoted to the rolling shag boxes, to the point of obvious saturation. On these pages are some of the wilder ones we pulled from the archives, with graphics and modifications that range from restrained to not so much. Keep on truckin'!